Holy Scripture, Human Reason, and Natural Theology

2006 ◽  
pp. 29-83
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Reason

The Contemporary Reception of Aquinas on the Natural Knowledge of God

2021 ◽  
pp. 595-611
Author(s):  
David VanDrunen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Summa Theologiae ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Attributes Of God

This chapter considers key themes from Thomas Aquinas’ view of the natural knowledge of God, or natural theology, from the opening of his Summa theologiae. It is written from the perspective of Reformed theology, which has traditionally supported natural theology of a certain kind, despite its recent reputation as an opponent of natural theology. According to Thomas, natural theology is insufficient for salvation and is inevitably laden with errors apart from the help of supernatural revelation. But human reason, operating properly, can demonstrate the existence and certain attributes of God from the natural order, and this natural knowledge constitutes preambles to the articles of the Christian faith. The chapter thus engages in a critically sympathetic analysis of these themes and suggests how a contemporary reception of Thomas might appropriate them effectively.

scholarly journals GLADSTONE, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY, 1840–1896

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 911-934
Author(s):  
JONATHAN CONLIN
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Natural Historian ◽  
Professional Scientist

AbstractBetween 1885 and 1891, the Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone debated the scientific status of the Book of Genesis with the natural historian Thomas Henry Huxley in a series of articles published in the Nineteenth Century. Viewed in isolation, this episode has been seen as a case of a professional scientist dismissing an amateur interloper. This article repositions this familiar dispute as one chapter in Gladstone's lifelong engagement with the concept of historical ‘development’, the unfolding or evolution of Providence to human reason over time, a concept which came to prominence in the 1840s, in both Tractarian theology and in natural history. Gladstone consistently advocated an accommodation between transmutation and natural theology based on a probabilist ontology derived from the eighteenth-century Anglican churchman Joseph Butler (1692–1752). That understanding of historical truth to which Gladstone credited his ability to discern when political issues became ripe for agitation demanded a humble, Christian moral temper that embraced doubt and salutary suffering, rather than certainty and whiggish celebration of progress.

General Revelation and the God of Natural Theology

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-213
Author(s):  
Andrew I. Shepardson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
General Revelation

In Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover? Postmodernism and Natural Theology, I defend natural theology against its postmodern evangelical detractors, including Myron Bradley Penner. Penner rejects natural theology because it attempts to ground knowledge of God in human reason, and he claims that my treatment of Acts 17:16–34 is fatal to my argument. However, Penner does not engage my explication of the doctrine of general revelation. The catastrophic effects that Penner perceives turn out to be only against a straw man of the version of natural theology that I defend.

Rationality and Religious Belief

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis P. Pojman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
Articles Of Faith

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ (e.g. the existence of God and his nature) over against the ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. the doctrine of the incarnation). Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: (1) that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason (which includes such unlikely bedfellows as Hume and Kierkegaard), placing faith in the area of irrationality; and (2) that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground (ordinary human reason). Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’.1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason (superior to it) and against reason (because reason has been affected by sin). The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless.

A Methodological Investigation on Christian Natural Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Chulho Youn
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Universal Reason ◽  
Culture Tradition

SummaryThe purpose of this article is to present a desirable understanding of Christian natural theology in terms of methodology. In the Enlightenment era, natural theology was understood as that which provides support for religious beliefs by starting from a premise that does not include any religious beliefs. The natural theology of this age was performed under the premise that humanity could prove God’s existence by universal reason without the revelation of God, and that everyone could reasonably agree with the proof. Today, however, the concept of universal reason, which all humans have in common, is being questioned. Today it has become clear that the human reason is conditioned by some sort of perspective formed within a particular culture, tradition, and community and therefore operates in a very diverse way. This article aims at proposing a natural theology which is required today methodologically in terms of postfoundational Christian natural theology. This investigation proceeds in the following order: the creation theology of the Old Testament (II; the natural theology in Christian history (III); the definition of Christian natural theology (IV); today’s Christian natural theology as a creation theology (theology of nature) and as a scientific theology (V); Jürgen Moltmann’s Christian natural theology in terms of methodology (VI); the postfoundational Christian natural theology as a model of postmodern Christian natural theology (VII); conclusion (VIII).

Thomas' Proofs as Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Towards a Trinitarian Analogia

1978 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
George Kuykendall
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The West ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
First Cause ◽  
God The Father

Thomas Aquinas argued that, while revelation alone can supply knowledge of the divine nature, unaided human reason can infer the divine existence from the world's existence. His proofs of God's existence are, in principle, extensions and elaborations of the patristic natural theologies. The Fathers believed that Neoplatonic and Hellenistic speculations about the eternal One, the arche of the cosmos, constituted a ‘natural’ knowledge of God the Father and his creation. God's selfrevelation in the incarnation was placed in the context of this natural theology. Augustine's version of natural theology both summed up the patristic achievement for the West and laid the foundation for Western medieval exploration of the natural knowledge of God. Like Augustine, Thomas believed one could reason naturally from the sensible world to God's existence; unlike him, Thomas reasoned with Aristotle and not Plato. Thomas' ordering of the natural and revealed knowledge of God repeats, then, the patristic sequence: first one proves that God is the first Cause of the world, and then one reasons from revelation about God's redemptive and reconciling relation to the world.

Natural Theology and the Ministry of the Word

1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-271
Author(s):  
Gwilym O. Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Ministry Of The Word ◽  
The World ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Theological Thought ◽  
Made In

We understand that if Theology in general means the systematised interpretation of Divine truth, Christian Theology means the systematised interpretation of the redemptive revelation of God in Christ. That is its subject, and its method is the exposition of Holy Scripture. Natural Theology differs from Christian Theology both in subject-matter and in method. Its subject is the revelation of God in Nature and in the world of man, and its method is the exposition of that revelation in the light of human reason and conscience. Of course this is not to say that there cannot be a Christian Natural Theology. That would be to prejudge an issue which is sharply dividing Protestant theological thought on the Continent at the present time and which is the occasion of this paper. But I think that, without prejudging that issue, it can be said that if the exposition of Nature and man's world be made in the light and under the authority of the Christian revelation, then, in a not unimportant sense, Natural Theology loses its distinctive character. For though, in that case, it continue to interrogate Nature and Man, it derives its decisive answers from the revelation in Christ, and thus becomes distinctively Christian and Scriptural.

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